The third and, for this semester, last seminar in the Digital Cultures and Games series run by HEX took place last Tuesday. This time it was Dr. Esther MacCallum-Stewart, from the University of Chichester and SMARTlab, the University of East London, who spoke on “The Street Smart of a Cartoon Princess: Female Avatars, Female Players”. One of her articles is to be found in Eludamos No 1, 2008: “Real Boys Carry Girly Epics: Normalising Gender Bending in Online Games”. The lecture was followed by a workshop where the participants tried a couple of different games such as Fall Out 3. Here the player has to decide how to design her/his avatar, from gender and skin colour to hairstyle and shape of the mouth. The series will continue next semester – check the HEX-site for more information!